Some Good Ol' Rockford Dam Fun!

No, your eyes are not deceiving you… It IS a new post.  A much anticipated new post.  I know so many of you have been wondering what Reynolds and the gang have been up to.  I wish we could say that we’ve been so busy traveling around Michigan and beyond, but unfortunately that isn’t true.  There are no excuses… life gets busy… so here we are!  We finally had a Saturday that worked for us all.  We started up Lisa’s new Ford Escape (soooo nice by the way!!!), and headed towards Rockford, MI.  Why Rockford?  Well, it the perfect location for a quick afternoon getaway, it had the small town appeal we enjoy, and last but not least, it had a dam (which I’m sure you can imagine all the dam jokes running around in our heads ).

Downtown Rockford was not hard to find.  We knew we were there because of all the cute little shops, and of course the dam.  After finding a parking spot we encountered our first “downtown Rockford experience” by entering the Reading Books bookshop.  From the outside this bookshop looked very exciting!  It was connected to an old train and caboose.  Sounds fun and adventurous, doesn’t it?  Well, that was probably the only cool thing about.  Yes, it was full of book of every genre you could think of.  Unfortunately, the largest genre were those risque romance novels whose covers leave very little to the imagination.  And the owner seemed to be a crazy cat lady who let her cats roam free, which led to a very smelly, unclean store.  But hey, we got to walk through an old train.  So I guess if you are willing to hold your nose (and at some points, close your eyes), then it was worth it to see (once!).

After that experience we decided to see what the rest of the town had to offer.  The Welcome Center seemed to be the best place to start!  Well all that got us (Joy specifically), was a possible pick-up line/bizarre interaction by a rather strange man who seemed to be in charge.  We exited rather quickly and decided we didn’t need any maps or direction.  So we started walking around and checking out all the unique shops Rockford had to offer.  First stop was the Trading Post.  They seemed to have a little bit of everything… scarves, jewelry, full body, red long-johns (complete with the butt-flap), and the typical “Michigan Made” tourist gifts. We also had lots of fun taking pictures with some furry friends. 

Some other shops to catch our eyes were The Dam Dogs (appropriately over-looking the Dam), the candy store that was going out of business and disappointingly had no candy, and quiet a few jewelry stores. 

One of our favorite stops was the WAR (Women At Risk) Boutique.  For those who do not know about WAR, please take a moment and go to there website and become educated on a real worthy cause.  http://www.warinternational.org/  WAR, International is an organization that is doing incredible work in the US and around the word to help educate women and children in areas of human trafficking and sexual slavery.  They have 3 WAR Chest Boutiques, with one located in Rockford, that sells jewelry, scarves, and other items made by these women at risk, across the world in safe houses.  It truly is a wonderful organization that is doing so much good in such a tragic and sinful part of life.  So… (pardon our little “commercial”) we helped out this orgaization and now have beautiful scarves to wear proudly.

After checking out the “retail” aspect of Rockford, we collected Reynolds from the car and decided to check out the dam.  Joy wanted to take some dam pictures (ok, ok… sorry, couldn’t resist ).  All joking aside, it was a beautiful sight.  Rockford has done a wonderful job making it into a nice, peaceful area.  We walked up onto the bridge.

There were two swans we stopped and talked to.  There is also a river walk beyond the bridge, and given warmer temperatures,  can see how nice of a walk and/or picnic spot this would be.

Being the strong, adventurous girls that we are, we braved the cold wind and walked along the river walk.  The river walk (along the Rogue River) is also part of the White Pine Trail.  A couple parks branch out from the trail and we found a couple of beautiful bridges as well.  Next time we go back, we will make sure it is a little warmer and maybe venture further along the trail and river walk.

So by the time our walk came to an end, we were three girls in desperate need of some hot coffee!  Good thing we found the Epic Coffee Shop when we were walking around the town earlier.  And what a nice coffee shop it was!  The inside was beautiful with a rustic brick look.  It smelled amazing, like the good coffee shops do, and the coffee was delicious!  While warming up we researched restaurants in the Ada area to eat at later that night.  So warmed up, with our bellies full of coffee, we said goodbye to Rockford and all our dam jokes, and headed for Ada Bible Church.

We have been to Ada Bible Church quite a few times.  Since we were going to be in the area, we decided our trip wouldn’t be complete without going to the Saturday night service.  It’s a bigger church than the three of us grew up at.  It’s always a refreshing experience.  The Pastor always delivers a much needed message and the worship is exactly what we always need.  Don’t you love it when a church service becomes a treat and not just something that you do because you’ve done it all your life?  Just something to leave you thinking about…

After church, we went to downtown Ada to find Schnitz Ada Grill.  We called to make sure they were open, so imagine our surprise when we couldn’t find it!  Seriously we drove up and down the street three times before we finally figured out that people were not going into the bike shop, like the lit up sign suggested… nope, it was Schnitz!  Apparently they don’t need a big sign.  It’s so good, people just know where it’s at.  Well, let me tell you… they really are that good!  Seriously, they had the best burgers/sandwiches we’ve had in a long time!  The atmosphere was a little chic and fun.  The only downside was that it was really noisy!  But the food seriously made up for it!  So if you ever go to Ada and want to eat at Schnitz, take some advice from us… look for the bike shop, and look up!

Well, it was a fun day, packed with many new things.  Definitely the right choice to jump back into our blog.  Hope this blog post made up for the many months of silence on our part.  Hopefully we redeemed ourselves and have you all waiting for more!  One little secret I will let you in on is that we went on a small adventure this past fall.  Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten it.  How about a little fall-back blog post in the near future?  In the meantime, if you get a chance, go check out Rockford.  Even in the winter it’s nice.  Or wait till the spring, take a picnic and enjoy being outside in God’s beautiful nature.  But please, go check it out.  It’s nice to see a small downtown that is thriving!

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